Senator Obama On Justice Thomas

Senator Obama has said that Justice Clarence Thomas did not have the legal and intellectual heft required for elevation to the United States Supreme Court. Senator Obama went on to say that he disagreed with Justices Thomas and Scalia on their legal reasoning, but Senator Obama did not question Scalia’s legal mind. Senator Obama was speaking on August 16 at a forum organized by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church of Lakeforest, CA.

When President Bush nominated Justice Thomas, Mr. Bush said Justice Thomas was the best qualified for the nomination. That statement became a running joke for many liberals who had opposed the nomination, but it should not have been. Qualification for the Supreme Court, as well as for a host of other government positions, now includes many factors. Among those factors are, race, sex, judicial philosophy, political affiliation, experience, age and intellect. When Clarence Thomas is examined over all those factors, he may well have been the most qualified for the nomination.

Senator Obama is not the first to have questioned the intellect of Justice Thomas, but if Senator Obama was not wedded to the misinformed beliefs of those who still oppose Justice Thomas, Mr. Obama's disposition towards Justice Thomas would would have been more enlightened.

If Justice Thomas was not intellectually qualified, where are his opponents waving poorly argued opinions while saying “we told you so”?

Over his years on the Court, opponents made the claim that Justice Thomas was simply following Justice Scalia. In her book, “Supreme Conflict”, Jan Crawford Greenburg addressed that point. What she found is that in many cases, it was Justice Scalia who was following Justice Thomas’s reasoning.

In an online discussion published on the New York Times website on July 14, 2008, former Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, weighed in on the Thomas/Scalia relationship in response to a question: “….Although Justices Scalia and Thomas often agree on the bottom line, the jurisprudential paths they take to get there are often rather different. Justice Thomas is more the libertarian, and has explicitly called for overruling much of 20th-century constitutional law. Justice Scalia is much more wedded to precedent, even precedents of which he is highly critical. Neither takes marching orders from the other, as is obvious to close readers like yourself.”